“I, too, have few friends,” says Louise. “But there is one friend who never fails me, through joy or sadness—my music.”
“Ah, there is naught like it to drive away that enemy to life, dull care,” put in the Don. “It is my one passion. And I have cultivated it only lately. But now I give myself up to it entirely, attending every concert of any repute, and bewailing fate a thousand times that I cannot play, or sing, or write.”
“I think I can guess your favorite melody—one of them, at least.”
“Can you, indeed?” asked Don Caesar, in interested surprise.
“The Sonata Pathetique.”
“Ah, is it not beautiful? You have guessed correctly, but how?”
“You were whistling it softly as you stood near yonder pillar, a moment before the occasion for your presence here arose.”
“Very probably. It is continually running through my head. Do you know, the melody has two meanings to me. When I am out of patience with the world and myself it seems tinged with an inexpressible melancholy. And when I am in good spirits the refrain becomes singing, joyous, triumphant. Has it ever seemed so to you?”
“I do not know. It has always seemed beautiful. It is my favorite.”
“And mine. You are not a New Yorker,” ventures Don Caesar.